Autumn Advent Journal : Prompts 20-25

These are the last prompts in my handmade book for April. That link will give you the background to this project. I am working with a limited colour palette and I will try and include stitching, sari ribbon and stencils on each spread. I had to amend a couple of these since very Christmas orientated. Click on any photo to see it larger.
Prompt 20 : Embellishing Autumn Leaves (Embellishing Christmas baubles) Going to use my gelli plate for this one... which turned into several backgrounds prepared! Does that happen to you?!

Prompt 21 : Home Where our family gathers. These are some of the people I really can't wait to see in person again.

Prompt 22 : April memories (Christmas memories) Easter, ANZAC, school holidays and Winter basketball. All different this year...COVID-19 : Level 4 stay at home from midnight Wed 25th March moving to Level 3 from Tuesday 28th April.Took the last gelli print from above right and decided to do a list

Prompt 23 : Phone call I text, call or Face Time message my mum, my brother and my sister(-in-law) every day. Inspired by a lesson from Roben-Marie Smith. You can still enrol for this today. See more detail about that HERE. Went through these stages 

turned upside down

and ended up here

Prompt 24 : Bedtime wish Safe and well together instead of apart.   Went from this (gelli plate in top photo)

to this background in stages from Roben-Marie's class

to this completed spread. I ♥ found poetry. These words all came from one page.

That's all the prompts from this 2018 class. I had one more spread cut to size and as I was talking to a friend online this morning I was commenting that in amongst the upset, I can also focus on some lovely things have come out of lockdown for me. Please note I know there are others struggling and not so lucky. My heart goes out to them with wishes for some grace and ease.   
Prompt 25 : Silver Linings FB Lives in NZ : Auckland Writer's Festival and RNZ Ballet, Family games, Free online art offerings - almost overwhelming!, plus huge gratitude for daily walks, for technology to communicate, for my lovely bubble boys (my family ♥), for our ability to work from home, Journal Jams, a pair of tui singing in my trees, for how well my Chemo treatment is going (over half way), my husband has finished some new steps for our deck, for catching up on some good movies and for this blog which is to share with and inspire you and also for me - art is keeping me grounded, happy, engaged, making new discoveries. I don't know how I'd manage without my creative time. And Marit provided the perfect quote : For the artist soul, isolation often is like a wood filled with birdsong (Louis Couperus)

Now I just have to alter the cover and I'm finished. 

Will share that hopefully tomorrow. To see other spreads in this project scroll through my April posts.  

Making papers inspired by Free classes

Kellee Wynne has created a Virtual Art Summit featuring 17 talented artists HERE. You can join for no charge but they are accepting donations to help create more programs like this and keep them available to everyone at no cost when they need it most. Last Day to register is April 30th, but Kellee has extended the watch time until May 31st.

Roben-Marie Smith is taking part creating collage papers. Here are some samples before she teaches the lesson.

I decided to work on 2 recycled magazine pages and also a couple of watercolour papers for my Autumn Advent Journal (will turn that into a link when do my last post about that). Because you are just playing you don't have to worry about the final outcome and you can tear into smaller pieces to apply as personal collage in your work. Keep it loose. No judgment. Keep turning your paper for a different perspective. The hardest part was waiting for the paint to dry on a cold day...and the no judgement part when in progress. In fact - taking a photo made me feel better about these papers and I probably could have stopped there.

I think one of my "blocks" was that I was trying to keep the watercolour pages in the right colour-way for my Autumn Journal which is not my usual happy colour place. So then I added some different colours on the pure play paper and felt happier. And then added more stencil marks = much more me. Being reminded of that Autumn palette led to the use of dark brown as a different dark. And then I decided some tissue or teabag transparent collage would be fun. You could just keep going but I'm there for now and feeling happy that I can move forward with these in a number of different ways eg. by adding collage and white pen marks to lighten. These are my finished play magazine papers to tear for collage for future projects:

I can see some really cool pieces that will happen once torn smaller - eg. that bottom left corner of the bottom piece. Scrummy and unexpected colour combo for me.
And I'll link here to show you how these watercolour background  pages for my Autumn Journal turned into spreads. These are pretty messy to be honest, but I'm not worried because I know how to salvage the beauty and cover up what I don't like.

If you enjoy Roben-Marie's lesson she has lots of inspiration on her blog - including her teabag #100DayProject - and also offers 2 FREE Journal workshops : Transitions Journal HERE

and Urban Journal Remix HERE.

I also came across this FREE offering from Jeanne Oliver which I thought would be fun to investigate after playing with Roben-Marie's technique.

Completely not my colour palette but interesting to see ideas of media and mark making tools. Hope this inspires you to have a play too.

Journal 52 : Week 17

Journal 52 is a weekly prompt from Effy Wild (Free HERE) that I'm creating on a deck of jumbo playing cards 3.5'' x 4.75'' (8.5 x 12 cm). Each card will include stitch, a found word, and be inspired by the project I've been working on that week or what's lying leftover on my work table. See the original post HERE.
#17 : Pause. Again this prompt is so relevant right now. My body needs me to slow down - to rest - to let the chemo do its work. I want to keep going and doing 'my normal' but I need to listen because my body is giving me all the right cues about what's needed. Effy's card had a face and I decided I'd do one too - inspired by the tilted head of my Autumn bliss spread this past week. Glued book paper to my playing card and drew her in Stabilo pencil. Once I'd added the water I loved her without too many additions. But I had to include a little background colour and my stitched element.

These are the 4 cards I've created in April

Find all my Journal 52 posts HERE